She was excellent at interpreting people when she wanted to, so Alice got the meaning of Culloden's looks on the first try. The looks of that kind of mischievous grin looked rather foreign on a professor's face, but the second expression of his received an even larger smile from her end.

This Gryffindor could take it, didn't he know?

Refocusing her attention back on her work instead of the potions master, she counted to sixty under her breath. The Gryffindor cleaned off her knife with another scouring charm in the mean time, slicing her slug into two pieces vertically and dropping in both of them. As the bits slid out of her gloved hand, she stepped away from her cauldron, avoiding the surface's explosion. Alice stepped forward to blow the fire out before it spread throughout the mixture, losing her breath quickly, but managing to stop the flame.

And then the salamander blood. She carefully measured out eight drops of the stuff before adding it to her cauldron, picking up her wooden stick afterwards. After glancing at the board again and scribbling down more notes, Alice set aside her quill and began to stir. Twice counterclockwise, twice clockwise, four times. Once she had counted sixteen revolutions of her stick in total, she pulled it out and examined what she'd created.

Although she had volunteered, the seventh year took a vial of her potion and then proceeded with the next step. It seemed like a good idea to add a little flobberworm mucus, vial the potion, add a little more, vial it again, and keep repeating until she'd gotten a full tablespoon in, you know? So that was exactly what Alice did, labeling each one carefully. Experimenting with different amounts of rigidity would be interesting.


Now... for the drinking. She was smart enough to wait for the other volunteers to guzzle it first, so that she'd know exactly what to expect. But even after Bart's looks and the little Newell's reaction, Alice was still going through with it. Standing at her seat and turning to Culloden, she grinned at him broadly as if to show him how fearless she was before drinking what she thought was a tablespoon from the mucus-less vial.

Good MERLIN, what made this HURT so MUCH?

Immediately, her mouth felt as if it was on fire, the feeling continuing all the way down her throat. A couple small coughs passed from her mouth involuntarily, but she was determined NOT to wince. The captain's body had other plans, though, so as she attempted to keep any signs of pain or suffering off her face, her expression was tainted with a bit of facial twitching.

At least the burning sensation was starting to fade. A bit after she'd drank it, a warmth settled in her stomach, and it was better. But Alice knew what part came next, and instead of trying to speak like Caleb, she kept her mouth clamped tightly shut and swallowed the belches threatening to escape her throat. She could almost hear gran telling her that burps weren't ladylike while she struggled to keep them down.

Through the fight, she smiled as widely- or as widely as one could with lips as pressed together as hers were- at the professor. See? Fine.

She didn't even register the smoke issuing from her nostrils. Dragon!Alice. Grrr.